SpinVox: thoughts after 2 weeks of use…

You might remember I mentioned a short while back, that I was going to be writing a post on SpinVox - now, this isn't the first post IntoMobile has dedicated to them (see here and here for example), but, it is the first usage review from a UK perspective! I signed up for the service about 2 weeks ago now, and since then have been watching with glee as my voicemails turn up as texts. Oddly, for the first few days I didn't get a single voicemail (very unusual for me), so I thought the service was broken, but sure enough it was working, and on day 4, in came the first texts! There are a lot of good things about the service, and a couple of things that are not quite so great - first the good:

• I love not having to dial up my voicemail - yes it's useful to get messages when you miss calls, no it's not useful to have to waste time getting them played back to youThe speech-to-text system works pretty well - not perfect, but pretty darn good!
• Your voicemails are still stored as traditional messages to be accessed by a call, so if you want to dial up too, you can
• The service cost is quite reasonable
• It's genuinely useful - you wonder why this isn't a standard feature offered by all operators

So there are a couple of less great points, and in fairness I feel I should list them:

• Sometimes there can be a bit of delay getting your converted message - when I just missed grabbing my handset in time for a call, I was expecting the converted text shortly afterwards - but occasionally more than a few minutes elapsed before I got the message
• The initial setup is a bit fiddly - that's not a criticism of SpinVox per se (since part of it is changing your voicemail quick dial key, typically the "1" key, to a new number), but still I would suggest it's more manual than say getting new WAP/MMS settings sent to your phone

Overall though, I'm happy, impressed, and liking the service - and heartily recommend to UK readers, and those other readers who have a supported country - speaking of which, you can check that out here . Ben --- Related Articles at IntoMobile:

• Update: neat video on how SpinVox works
• New SpinVox plug-in links voicemails with contacts
• Alltel launches Voice2TXT voicemail transcription service
• Alltel to offer Voice-to-Text voicemail service - SpinVox
• Walt Mossberg's got an iPhone; Regular keyboards rule?